Product Description

John Sayles is a film-maker of many faces: the writer/director of authentically independent films rooted in good talk, character study and social reflection (Matewan and Passion Fish). He has also crafted vibrant, sardonic projects for Roger Corman (Piranha, Alligator), as well as working as a screenwriter-for-hire (Apollo 13). He has been nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Recent films, such as City of Hope and Lone Star exhibit Sayles' great gift as a storyteller, aligned to a social conscience and a stylistic adventurousness, as he follows his characters' complex journeys towards self-honesty and personal truth. In Sayles on Sayles, Gavin Smith takes John Sayles step-by-step through the trajectory of his career and film-making practice, and in the process illuminates the work of one of the truly authentic US independent film-makers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #822173 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-21
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
John Sayles isn't just the "Great American Novelist/Filmmaker", he's one terrific interview subject: smart, funny, and fully informed about the farce that is Hollywood and the tragedies of American history. Film Comment magazine's Gavin Smith is one of the sharpest, most thorough interviewers of directors in American journalism. Sayles on Sayles explains how a guy who sold his blood for money and only took creative-writing courses to keep his grade point high enough to avoid the Vietnam draft wound up winning an O. Henry Award, how his National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle nominations for Union Dues fed his career as a writer for B-movie tsar Roger Corman (and his continuing relationship with Titanic director James Cameron), and the bumpy road from Return of the Secaucus Seven to double Oscar nominations, masterpieces such as Matewan and Lone Star, and such writing gigs as Apollo 13--which paid better than selling one's blood. What precisely did Tom Hanks brilliantly do to improve Apollo 13? What did Jeffrey Katzenberg do to Baby It's You when he realized it wasn't enough like Porky's? How did Nashville inspire Secaucus Seven, and why does Sayles think The Big Chill owes nothing to his film? What crucial influence did Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man have on early Sayles, and on one great scene in The Brother from Another Planet--a film that came to Sayles in a dream? Get this book and find the answers from one of the best American storytellers of recent times.

About the Author
Gavin Smith is the editor of Sayles on Sayles and is a contributing editor to Film Comment.